Washington, DC – Late yesterday, further details were published on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website about new requirements the Trump Administration seeks to implement to force foreign-born individuals to register with the federal government. Leadership from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) responded as follows:
AILA President Kelli Stump stated, "These new registration requirements threaten to drag us back to a dark period of history when simply appearing ‘foreign’ puts you at risk of law enforcement arrest, detention and more drastic consequences. The last time the U.S. government required non-citizens to register came after 9/11 and the result was a gross and ineffective waste of taxpayer dollars that didn’t make anyone safer and caused unnecessary confusion and harm to thousands of American families and businesses. If implemented, this registration requirement will amount to a nationwide ‘show me your papers’ regime with anyone who might be profiled, even U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status, scared and unable to go anywhere without their passport or other documentation. We’ve already seen and heard of U.S. citizens swept up in raids, arrested, and detained. This will just make it exponentially worse."
AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson cautioned, "This new registration requirement is only going to create more chaos and confusion and will result in criminalizing people who are otherwise law-abiding members of communities all over this country. Reading this proposal, among other concerns, Canadian visitors waved in without having fingerprints taken would be subject to registration within 30 days and children turning 14 would be required to register despite not being otherwise considered an adult by our government. Frankly, this feels like a trap being set that will seek to label immigrants as ‘criminals’ in order to justify a mass deportation scheme. This registration policy ignores and even denigrates the indispensable contributions immigrants from all walks of life have made to American society since the country’s inception."
